Steven Pinker – How do you make sense of the unknown?

This is a transcript of an interview with Steven Pinker on the Big Think website recorded On: 6/13/07. I thought it was some of the clearest thinking I’d heard in a long time. The whole interview is below, and I’ll make noted\s in between as I see fit. You can watch the video here.

Question: How do you make sense of the unknown?

Steven Pinker: I think that using the word God or the attitude of faith toward that which you don’t know is a copout. It’s a way of slapping a label on something rather than trying to understand it. Or since we may not understand everything, just say there are some things we don’t understand. To invent stories that sound as if they were true or could be true, to pretend that they’re true just so that we can have a story I think is unsatisfying, and it could even be immoral because it could lead you to mistaken policies to getting in the way of your best understanding of how the world works, to doing things that lead to more harm than good. A concrete example would be treating a cancer with some cockamamie herbal or homeopathic formula instead of the best medicine that we have. Or justifying invasions, and murders, and sacrifices on the grounds of appeasing some god or carrying out some divine mandate. There’s nothing but mischief that can come from inventing stories for that which we don’t understand. There’s nothing wrong with saying there are some things we don’t understand.

Very well put indeed. This is one of the main reasons I blog about religion and atheism. So many people take a stance like “I don’t care what people believe as long as it doesn’t affect me or hurt anyone.” the problem with this statement is, depending on the political, social or public standing of the believer, their beliefs can be harmful to others, if not directly then by means of their decisions which can be skewed because of some false belief. Here in Australia we have decision-makers who are making statements about the future of the people in this country based on their own religious beliefs, as has been happening in the USA also.

Likewise people like Meryl Dorey and the AVN group here and Jenny McCarthy in the USA, using their baseless stance that vaccination can cause more harm than good, are causing people to stop vaccinating and thereby causing pockets of disease across the country, and these are diseases we once had good control over.

Religion aside, do you feel a sense of purpose?

There are some questions that may not have answers because they are bad questions. A question like, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It may just be a stupid question. The question of why am I here, why was I put here, what is my greater purpose, might be like that. Given that I am here, I do think that I have an ethical imperative to be good to other people, to put my life to some purpose that I can define like understanding the world better, helping other people, taking the best advantage of the gifts that I find myself with; but some cosmic reason as to “why me” seems to me a kind of arrogance or egotism. Why should the cosmos care about me? That’s seems to be the height of grandiosity to think that it would.

Great point, and one I have tried to make in the past. The whole idea of being special in a cosmic sense is not only a bit infantile, but brazenly selfish. It’s this kind of selfishness that makes for bad decisions. Even if there were an all-powerful creator God, why on earth would he favour some people over others or give two thoughts about the wellbeing of one person over the next? The world was not put here as our playground by a god, and the sooner we realise this the sooner we can get on with fixing the problems we all have to face.

Does humankind have an overarching purpose or direction?

One of the things that I think science show us is that the idea that there’s some purpose to the universe is one that we should outgrow. There’s a purpose to each one of our lives, and we can articulate what that purpose is and why we have it; but why humans emerged on earth, why there is a planet earth, why the universe does what it does, we’ve got to outgrow these questions. It is very clear that there is no purpose in that sense. The fact that the sun will expand and consume the entire earth; that the universe might blow apart; that 99 percent of species go extinct and it would be sort of arrogant to say that homo sapiens would be the only one that doesn’t; the fact that the earth is one out of presumably thousands, and millions, and billions of planets that could support life – that there’s nothing distinguished about our solar system. All of those realizations say that the idea that we were put here for some purpose is a kind of medieval ignorance and arrogance. That doesn’t mean that we humans, with the brains that we have, with our understanding of what we value and don’t, don’t have a purpose. And in many ways there is a kind of fulfillment of human purposes that has gone on through history owing to the cumulative efforts of humans to make something of their lot to achieve something worth while. We know more. It’s astonishing how much we do know. There’s lots we don’t know, but the fact that we know the genetic code of life; that we know how old the universe is; that we know how the earth was formed; that we know the basic constituents of chemistry, this is mind-boggling stuff. People in the 17th century would have given up anything for a glimpse of what we know today. That’s something to be . . . to celebrate. The fact that we’ve gotten less violent over time. We no longer have human sacrifices. We’ve outlawed slavery in most of the world. We no longer have capital punishment for trivial crimes and misdemeanors. We don’t have routine torture, burning at the stake, disemboweling, crucifixion. The number of wars has gone down in the last 50 years. By many measures we’ve become a less violent species; not because there is some force in the universe pushing us in that direction, but I think because we recognize the futility and the undesirability of violence. And we tinker in various ways to reduce them. And in some degree slowly, incrementally we’ve succeeded.

When put like this it is really important that we see what we as humans have achieved historically. We as a species have no purpose but to reproduce, andwe don’t want to do this at the expense of comfort and happiness, so we strive and progress, and this gives us a secondary sense of purpose; the drive for betterment of the human species.

What are the obstacles to secular enlightenment?

It’s hard to know what the obstacles are. There are certain features in human nature. People, I think, are left to their own devices, tribal. People left to their own devices are dogmatic. They’d rather their truth be imposed than challenged. They are, I think, by nature self-deceived. It’s painful to work your way out of those alter human traits, and it’s a constant battle. To live in a modern society is to be criticized; to be refuted; to be hemmed in by rules that you wish wouldn’t apply to you; to have to state your case; to constantly justify what you do. You take a historian of ideas that is wiser than he to diagnose how the west managed to do it in a way that could apply to other cultures. How modernization took place. Part of it might be technological. The spread originally of the printing press and affordable books. But we live in an age today where we have even better media like the Internet, and that isn’t the magic wand that brings the entire world into the enlightenment. How those attitudes change is, I think, an important and unsolved puzzle.

This is where you and I step in. We now have the means, via our technologies, to spread real information, good information, reasonable, rational and secular information around the globe. We now have the power to influence people who would have otherwise never have read our words. This is such an important time in history. We have an opportunity to make real decisions for the betterment of the whole planet, rather than just for greed, ego and belief. Either we get it right now, or we will be forever cleaning up our own mess. And I for one think we can make change.

§ 19 Responses to Steven Pinker – How do you make sense of the unknown?

This is a misunderstanding of faith. Faith is not believing in what we can’t know, it’s growing in knowledge of a mystery we can know. Just because something isn’t empirically verifiable doesn’t make it true. Reason is narrowed if we think that way. You won’t understand the meaning of the universe by studying the expansion of the sun. It takes love to understand.

Thanks Tim, but I think there’s a problem here. The “meaning of the universe” is no more valid than saying “the meaning of a rock” or “the meaning of air”. These things don’t have meaning, and neither does the universe or even life for that matter. It’s like trying to come up with an answer with no question.

And just because something isn’t empirically verifiable doesn’t make it true either. The fact that there is no certainty about things does not make it probable, or even likely. if there is .000001% chance for something, it doesn’t make it fact.

This is the God Of The Gaps approach, and I’m afraid it holds no water for me.

Human being equipped with knowledge in form of human three knowing tools. The first is peripheral nerve system or human senses functioning as Knowledge with Lower Consciousness (KLC). The second is central nerve system or mind brain functioning as Knowledge with Medium Consciousness (KMC). The last is consciousness DNA as Knowledge with Higher Consciousness (KHC).

KLC is the hub of our Physical Universe (PU). KMC is the hub of our Inner Universe (IU). KHC is the hub of our Divine Universe (DU) respectively. The human last frontier is not Space as Star Trek mentioned, but DU. So, my motto is “To boldly go to where some people have gone before” not Star Trek’s “To boldly go to where no man has gone before”

Last but not least, “make sense” or “deducto-hypothetico-verificative” mindset only valid limited within domain PU and IU. Beyond that, IU to DU, we use the word “enlightenment” or “gnosis” mindset

Thank you for this exemplar post demonstrating the dangers of what Pinker means by “slapping a label on something rather than trying to understand it”. This post is nothing more than a “Proof by Intimidation” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation ) in which you contribute absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand.

The fact that you cite your own social networking site as evidence of your claims does not lend any additional credibility to your theory. This is (1) self-referential and (2) not a peer-reviewed scientific publication.

The fact that registration is required to view these links you have posted is another red flag, as I’m a firm believer that good science is conducted openly. I refuse to register at your site because I feel that increasing the number of registered users would indirectly add undue creditibility to your claims. The fact that you repeatedly reference your own site supports this as a probable motive for your posting here. What I’m left with are the comments posted on this and other blogs, and the presentations you have posted at scribd.com. Based on what I’ve read so far, I remain very skeptical. In the interesting of advancing scientific knowledge, “making sense of the unknown”, I’m posting what I percieve as flaws in your model.

First, your definition of “knowledge” is (1) subject to Type II errors and (2) too vague for scientific testing. By defining “knowledge” as “Human Enlightenment Agent (HEA) evolved as emergent behavior inside human body as complex (adaptive) system since beginning, having Consciousness* and free will (mind and value) as well as behaving dynamically as Subject acting to transform physical realities into Data and Information toward higher level and maturity of Knowledge and beyond”, you:
(a) unnecessarily limit knowledge to the human species – your definition excludes the possibility of knowledge being acquired by other animals and/or machines.
(b) unnecessarily make knowledge dependent on Consciousness – which is ill defined as noted below
(c) unnecessarily make knowledge dependent on free will – which is an unnecessary assumption
(d) lack a well defined method of experimental verification

Second, your definition of “Consciousness” is absent from the resources I had available, but seems to differ radically from the conventional definitions. The three most common definitions are (1) “Consciousness” as awareness or wakefulness, (2) “Consciousness” as self-awareness, or (3) “Consciousness” as the presence of an internal mind-space. In your KLC/KMC/KHC taxonomy, the only level that seems capable of “Consciousness” in any of these 3 definitions is the second level, KMC. The peripheral nervous system and human senses are not “Conscious” without the central nervous system and human brain. DNA can not possibly be “Conscious” as it is nothing more than a molucular structure.

Third, your use of the phrase “Divine Universe” has supernatural connotations. Science is concerned only with natural phenomenon. Your suggestion that the “deducto-hypothetico-verificative” process be abandoned between KMC and KHC suggests an abandoment of scientific rigor. This is a pseudoscience “red-flag”.

In the interest of improving the credibility of your work, I would suggest two things: (1) that you modify your social networking site to permit “guest” access, making the information publicly available, (2) that you make an effort to avoid “New Age Spiritualism” terminology in your model.

My motivation is rooted from my basic postulate that Knowledge always exist or evolved insight human body resulting from our emergent property behavior as complex (adaptive) system. Therefore, Knowledge always behaving as subject not as Data and Information which are exist outside human body and always treated as object. But in reality, considering we’re “being trapped within scientific mind” or Newtonian framethought since 17th century, we should admit the existence of Scientific Knowledge.

From my postulate, I established my paradigm that Knowledge partially, especially post (adjacent to) Data and Information domain could be treated as Scientific Knowledge, but beyond that toward Wisdom it’s hard to treat as before, so it must become “Knowledgeable Science” (seems as Pseudo Science from Scientific point of view isn’t it?). This situation reflected in the fact among others of “endless debate of Epistemology and Ontology of Knowledge as well as Knowledge Management (KM)”. From the literatures there are mentioned at least 50 – 60 KM definition! This is the essence or nature of different view between Eastern and Western way of thinking

The postulate plus the paradigm making the mission. In brief my mission is to “To make the differences between “Scientific Knowledge” and “Knowledgeable Science” could be understood publicly”. My strategy is through establishing a Social Networking Site carrying out theme “Toward next generation KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 2.0 through contextual learning on the issues of TECHNOLOGIES, MARKET, PEOPLE and INNOVATION”

Yes, I’m aware that because I’m committed to it, I should walk through “grey area” and to somewhat extend seems to violating scientific principles as you feel. Despite formerly I was teaching Research Methodology and Philosophy of Science in a Medical School before my retirement.

From considerations above mentioned, my network privacy policy on my Social Networking Site (SNS) is : “one author-multiple people commenting-credited content” method and “public visitor can see ‘Just the Main Page’ before deciding to sign-up”

NOTES : Consciousness comes from DNA, first mentioned by well known Carl Sagan as an edited article by John Hartmann in “the Richard Dawkins Foundation – Four Reason and Science – NEWS”, 2007 – http://richarddawkins.net/articles/1057-consciousness-comes-from-dna As you may know, both Carl Sagan, the cosmologist, as well as Richard Dawkins, the biologist, are well known atheistic thinkers in science. Meg B. Losey PhD also mentioning this issue as chapter contributor in best seller book “The Mystery of 2012”, Gregg Braden et al, 2009

There is a large amount of misinformation in this post that I feel obligated to correct. Based on the general lack of coherency in your post, I suspect that many of these errors may be due to a limited understanding of the English language.

First, your “basic postulate” (by definition, an assumption made without proof) is false. Knowledge cannot be treated as “always behaving as subject”. It is not an independent agent, but rather an attribute describing the skills and understanding possessed by some other agent. Knowledge does not act on its own accord. Instead, the agent possessing that knowledge is the one to act. Regardless of whether or not your deductions from this postulate are valid, the argument as a whole is not sound.

Second, there’s a very logical explanation for why you’re having so much difficulty classifying wisdom into your hierarchy of knowledge. Wisdom is not a type of knowledge! Wisdom is defined as the application of knowledge to everyday situations. Furthermore, your use of the phrase “Knowledgeable Science” in the context of wisdom is redundant. All science is based on having extensive information, the very definition of “knowledgeable”. Suggesting that scientific thinking needs to be abandoned to obtain wisdom is false. Wisdom can be thought of as the capacity to take scientific knowledge and apply it to a specific problem. As an analogy, knowledge is to wisdom as science is to engineering.

Regarding the “Consciousness comes from DNA” article, it seems that you misunderstood the nature of the study being referenced. The study in the article is only concerned with a very small component of consciousness, which is “Self-Recognition”. This behavior, as measured by the “mirror test”, is a very limited measure of consciousness. Sagan/Druyan explicitly state that the focus is on the search for “rudimentary consciousness”, and also note that “distinguishing itself from another… is not what is generally meant by consciousness or self-awareness”. The title of this excerpt is somewhat misleading. There is evidence that certain genes may be “necessary” for the behaviors associated with consciousness, but there is not enough evidence to conclude that DNA alone is “sufficient” for consciousness. To cite Richard Dawkins (http://bigthink.com/ideas/17051), consciousness is “something that emerges from brains”, which I touched on in my previous post in regards to the KLC/KMC/KHC model.

In the above video, Dawkins goes on to say: “we don’t know which animals are conscious. We don’t actually, technically, even know that any other human being is conscious. We just each of us know that we ourselves are conscious.”. This brings me to my next point, which is that there is absolutely no scientific evidence of a consciousness transition occurring in the year 2012 or on any other date. How do I know this? There is no scientific method for measuring consciousness! The closest thing we have to such a experiment is the “Turing Test”, which was originally designed to measure if machines could think. However, even that test has its limitations (i.e. Searle’s “Chinese Room”). You mention Gregg Braden’s “Mysteries of 2012” as a reference, which is not a very credible source. Pretty much all of Braden’s major theories have been thoroughly debunked. This is not a peer-reviewed scientific study, but rather a book published with the intention of capitalizing on a superstitious belief.

As a final note, to hopefully bring this discussion back on topic, I find very ironic that you claim we’re “trapped within the scientific mind” while your comments lack even the slightest resemblance to scientific thinking. You say that “knowledge management is not pseudo science”, which may be true, but the claims you’ve made here are arguably pseudoscience. Scientific hypotheses are necessarily falsifiable. The existence of your “Divine Universe” is not a falsifiable hypothesis. Scientific theories are based on experimental evidence. Your theory is based on a postulate, which is logically inconsistent to begin with. The excessive use of jargon terms in your posts, many of which are used incorrectly, suggests that the real purpose behind your posting here is to drive your social networking site’s listing up in various search engines. By doing so, you can convince people to join your network and consequently make your theory appear to be more credible than it really is.

One of the questions in the original post was “What are the obstacles to secular enlightenment?” and I think pseudoscience is one of them. Our society is not “trapped within the scientific mind”, but rather the majority of the population still adheres to superstitious beliefs that are not based on any observable evidence. Pinker’s response here seems very appropriate: “People left to their own devices are dogmatic. They’d rather their truth be imposed than challenged. They are, I think, by nature self-deceived… To live in a modern society is to be criticized; to be refuted; to be hemmed in by rules that you wish wouldn’t apply to you; to have to state your case; to constantly justify what you do.”

All D, I, K, W as well as M considered as Knowledge having broad meaning or we called each as “Noor” or “Light” and (Eastern) people look upon it as “human enlightenment” agent. And we look the phenomenon of DIKWM continuum from “Human Being as a holistic highest complexity creature in the Universe”

Finally, on the basis of the difference principles among us, in which I have 3 (three) Universes, Physical – Inner – and Divine Universe while you have 2 (two) Universes, Physical – and Inner Universe, I’d like to suggest an open ended conclusion between us regarding the topics we discussed.

Saying that I “have 2 (two) Universes, Physical – and Inner Universe” is incorrect. What you call “Inner Universe” (I prefer the term “mind-space”) is not something outside of the “Physical Universe”. It exists within the brain as a physical phenomenon. There are theories that predict the existence of more than one “universe”, such as M-theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory ), but our acceptance of such theories still needs to be founded on experimental evidence.

By your inclusion of Marifa, it seems obvious that the real motivation behind your model is religious rather than scientific. In that case, I fear that nothing I say here can change your mind as you’ve already rejected rational thinking. However, I do feel that this rejection is in error and knowledge obtained through irrational means is not true knowledge. Since I doubt you’ll take my word for it, I offer this quotation from an ‘Enlightened’ Eastern Philosopher, Siddhartha Gautama: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Whatever the terms used, as living reality mostly among eastern people believe in three universes. D-I-K covering the first Universe. K-W covering second Universe, as you called it “mind-space” which is included in Physical Universe. And W-beyond (M) covering the third Universe. Those three Universes of my version representing our Body – Mind – Soul.

Each universe has its own theory or model, such the first Universe explained by the scientists with String theory. Second Universe among others by Freud theory. And the third Universe by Tasawwuf descriptions. All the theories as well as the descriptions are using our mind brain for the sake to get easily understood since our mind brain is the human “practical” knowing tool not the same with other knowing tools, human conscience as second tool and human “divine senses or revelation” as third tool respectively

I’m not rejecting rational thinking whatsoever, as far as it is under Body – Mind domain matter. You can say that my motivation model is religious. Yes, in my view, religious is positively human belief domain which is by nature behaving as complex adaptive system evolved in several stages evolution in human history but unfortunately to human being it has a very high complexity content and fully contextual dependent, making rationalist thinkers prone to reject it and “diverge on debate” will coloring every discussion

The wisdom of our discussion one among others, if I may suggest, is a statement that “the function of Knowledge is bridging science and religion” as well as Knowledge carrying out “mission impossible to making sense the unknown”. By clarification, the term “Sensemaking” is the act of creating meaning out of a mess of unstructured data and information. The understanding that results from sensemaking is not a definitive answer, rather it is an understanding that is adequate for the organization to plan and take its next action ( Nancy M. Dixon, 2008)

One of so many evidences of “symptoms and signs” in our daily existence of three-universe phenomenon indicated by people using three pair of key words in choosing their life preferences. They are namely, preferring “Good or Bad ” within domain of physical evidence representing physical universe. The second preferential is “True or False” in scientific or sensemaking preference representing mind or inner universe. The third is preferring “Right or Wrong” for the sake of human process toward divine universe domain.

In academic life, our education objectives representing either “Good or Bad” or “True or False” driven by probability-based or error theory as the back bone of science in making decision. Beyond academic or scholar life, preferring “Right or Wrong” e.g. in answering moral questions likely using possibility-based or informational dynamics contrary to quantifying information as in science.

What is interesting is the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Semantic Web technology which have capabilities through contextual approach to assist us toward the process in preferring “Right or Wrong” choices

As I mentioned recently (June 26, 2010), there are three pairs of key words used to describe how human choosing their life preferences in the universe. They are namely “Good or Bad”, “True or False” and “Right or Wrong”. Those three pairs of key words describing human life preferences in physical universe, inner universe and divine universe respectively.

Below are the list of such pairs of words, evidence-based generated and describing physical universe, inner universe and divine universe (“the unknown”) respectively. I’d like to name them as “The Universal Trio Phenomenon”. By any mean, it is not intended as “Proof by intimidation”. It is intended as my contribution in the form of knowledge and/or information sharing purpose for the sake of our effort to make sense of the unknown

Because of my “unknown” orientation is Islamic sources, quite many of terminologies derived from Tasawwuf or Sufi as my Knowledge-base resources. Anyhow it is intended whatsoever to narrowing the gap between Science and Religion as living reality in human history